Sunrun, BGE, and Ford activate first US residential vehicle-to-grid power plant using F-150 Lightning trucks
A Ford F-150 Lightning parked in a Maryland driveway can now do something no residential electric vehicle in the United States has done before: send electricity directly to the power grid on demand.
On September 24, 2024, Sunrun, Baltimore Gas and Electric, and Ford activated what they describe as the nation’s first residential vehicle-to-grid distributed power plant. The pilot dispatches energy from enrolled customers’ F-150 Lightning trucks to the grid between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. on weekdays — the hours when electricity demand runs highest.
First residential V2G power plant goes live in Maryland
Three customers in BGE’s Maryland service area are currently enrolled. Each one uses an F-150 Lightning to push electricity back to the grid during that evening peak window. A small number of trucks — but a real milestone.
The BGE and Sunrun partnership launched the previous summer with vehicle-to-home capability — letting F-150 Lightning owners power their homes during outages.
Participating customers earn payments based on how much energy their truck shares with the grid. The maximum payout for the dispatching season, which runs through the end of September, is $1,000. That’s actual money for doing little more than plugging in a vehicle that’s already sitting in your driveway.
The program started dispatching energy back in July. That timing wasn’t random — summer heat events pushed demand on the eastern grid to alert levels, and utilities needed every available resource to keep the lights on.
How the technology behind the program works
The hardware making this possible is the Ford and Sunrun co-developed Home Integration System, paired with the Ford Charge Station Pro. Together, these two components form what Sunrun describes as the first commercially available bidirectional EV charging system in the United States.
Bidirectional charging means the F-150 Lightning’s battery doesn’t just pull electricity from the grid — it can push electricity back out. That two-way flow is what makes vehicle-to-grid dispatch work at the residential level.
The system can deliver up to 9.6 kW of power to wherever it’s needed. Ford’s app shows real-time flow from the truck’s battery to both your home and the grid, so you can track exactly where that energy is going. That visibility matters — it helps you understand what your vehicle is actually doing while it sits parked.
Sunrun creates and manages the program. When a dispatch event is triggered, enrolled trucks automatically send stored energy to the grid during the 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. weekday window. You don’t have to do anything.
Grid reliability and cost reduction are the primary drivers
This summer gave utilities a clear reminder of why programs like this matter. Extreme heat drove demand across a large portion of the eastern grid to alert levels — the kind of stress that strains infrastructure and pushes electricity prices up for everyone on the system.
Dispatching EV batteries during those high-demand hours helps utilities avoid the worst of that pressure. BGE’s Director of Clean Energy Solutions, Divesh Gupta, said V2G technology makes the energy system “more reliable, more efficient,” and can help lower electricity costs for customers broadly — not just those enrolled in the program.
The policy dimension matters here too. Maryland’s 2024 DRIVE Act was cited by state Delegate David Fraser-Hidalgo as enabling legislation that helped make this commercial pilot possible. He described the activation as exactly the type of innovation the law was designed to unlock, and said he hopes similar customer-centered solutions will scale to meet the state’s growing electricity needs.
As more EVs hit the road, their combined battery capacity becomes a significant untapped resource for grid management. Programs like this one are early proof that the resource can actually be dispatched.
Program background and the broader V2G landscape
This pilot didn’t appear out of nowhere. The BGE and Sunrun partnership launched the previous summer with vehicle-to-home capability — letting F-150 Lightning owners power their homes during outages. Vehicle-to-grid dispatch is the next step, moving from home backup to active grid participation.
The commercial relationship between Sunrun and Ford already existed before this pilot. Sunrun serves as Ford’s preferred installer for Ford Home Backup Power, which includes the Charge Station Pro and the Home Integration System — an existing foundation that gave the three companies a real head start on deployment.
BGE’s scale adds weight to what this pilot could become. As Maryland’s largest utility, BGE serves more than 1.3 million electric customers. Even if only a fraction eventually join a V2G program, the aggregate battery capacity available to the grid could be substantial.
What this pilot means going forward
All three companies have framed this activation as a model — not a finished product. Sunrun CEO Mary Powell, Ford’s Bill Crider, and BGE’s Divesh Gupta all pointed toward expansion, describing the pilot as a demonstration of what’s possible when technology and policy line up.
A few things are worth stating clearly. Residential V2G dispatch is now operational in the United States — not theoretical, not in a lab. The hardware is commercially available today. Customers can earn money from participation, which gives people a concrete reason to sign up beyond environmental motivation.
What’s still unclear is how fast the model scales. Three enrolled customers are a proof of concept. Turning that into a meaningful grid resource will take more vehicles, more utilities, and more enabling policy — but this pilot makes one thing clear: the foundation is real.
Kelly is an experienced writer with 15 years of experience exploring the big stories that shape our world, from tech breakthroughs and space exploration to climate, energy, and the fascinating quirks of science. She has a talent for turning complex ideas into sharp, memorable insights that stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading.
